


I'm Really Happy You're Not Dead

by YouCanJive



Series: Time is the Longest Distance (Between Two Places) [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Cancer, Darcy Lewis Feels, Darcy Lewis Needs a Hug, Gen, Sick Character, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, references to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 13:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19427110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouCanJive/pseuds/YouCanJive
Summary: Darcy was sick, but soulmarks were a guarantee. She had not met her soulmate yet, so she could not die.But then she’d met her soulmate, and her safety net was gone.





	I'm Really Happy You're Not Dead

At first, it didn’t feel real.

In fact, Darcy thought it might have been a hallucination. Her doctors had just started her on a new, experimental treatment and had said hallucinations were a possible, if unlikely, side effect. Maybe she should report it to her nurse.

But there were the phone numbers, scribbled in blue ink on the back of one of Darcy’s homeschool assignments, one labeled “Tony” and the other “Pepper.” He must have held his pen very tightly, because the writing had made an indentation on the paper, and she could almost read it in reverse on the flip side of the algebra worksheet. She ran her fingers over the indentations over and over again until she had convinced herself that Tony – her soulmate – was just as real as the phone numbers he had written down for her. Then she pulled out her rhinestone-covered agenda and carefully copied the numbers over. She was half certain she’d memorized Tony’s number by the time she’d put her agenda back in her backpack.

Then came the nerves.

Tony had clearly been shocked, even spooked by her. He kept staring at her and calling her “kid” and generally acting freaked out.

Darcy couldn’t blame him. She understood the weirdness of an adult bonding with a teenager. It must feel even weirder on his end. That was without taking into account the whole cancer thing. Moreover, he was _Tony Stark_ and she was, you know, _her._

No wonder he’d taken off like that. No wonder he hadn’t asked for her number, her address, any details by which to contact her. He’d just left his number. Like she’d asked. So she could find someone to notify him when she was dead.

God, she couldn’t believe she’d spoken like that to Tony Stark. To her soulmate. To her soulmate, Tony Stark. He probably thought she was a brat now. He’d never want to speak with her again.

And with that came the fear.

That he’d never speak to her again. Not just because, let’s face it, why would he want to. But because she would be dead soon.

She’d said her mother put a lot of faith on Darcy’s not having yet met her soulmate, because it meant she would not die yet. And that was true enough. But Darcy had drawn comfort from that knowledge, too. Soulmarks were a guarantee, after all.

When she’d started waking up drenched in sweat: _she couldn’t die yet, she still hadn’t met her soulmate_.

When she’d first noticed the damn lump on her neck: _she couldn’t die yet, she still hadn’t met her soulmate_.

When she’d first gotten her diagnosis: _she couldn’t die yet, she still hadn’t met her soulmate_.

When the doctors spoke about worsening odds and riskier drug trials: _she couldn’t die yet, she still hadn’t met her soulmate_.

When the drugs meant to cure her made her so miserable and left her in such pain that she wished she would just die already: _she couldn’t die yet, she still hadn’t met her soulmate_.

Soulmarks were a guarantee. But now she’d met her soulmate, and her safety net was gone.

Darcy’s parents and doctors couldn’t understand what had changed Darcy’s outlook so drastically, seemingly overnight.

Where before Darcy had been generally light-hearted and optimistic, her thoughts increasingly revolved around death. She lost interest in her schoolwork, taking an almost nihilistic perspective about it all. She tried to put on a show for her parents, but they knew her too well and pretending required more energy than Darcy felt most days.

Darcy turned sixteen with little fanfare and no appetite for cake, or even for the ice cream the nurses suggested instead. Though she was too nauseous and her joints hurt too much for her to fall asleep, she pretended to be asleep most of the day. Her parents cried by her bedside. They barely bothered trying to hide their tears anymore.

They understood what was happening just as well as she did: Darcy was dying.

And then, miraculously, the newest treatment plan had started to work.

After a year of the ghastly drugs having no effect and of Darcy getting sicker and sicker, the cancer began to lose ground. Darcy still felt awful – the treatment really _was_ worse than the disease, in some ways – but suddenly there was hope.

Eventually, she started to feel better. Darcy dared to imagine what she might say to her soulmate if she ever got to speak with him again. Would he be relieved she’d lived? Disappointed? Happy? Would he want to meet her again? Darcy wondered what he might be like, when he wasn’t taken by surprise.

On a sunny morning in June 2005, almost four years after her initial diagnosis, Darcy’s oncologist said the words most cancer patients only dared dream of: _no evidence of disease_. Darcy was in complete remission.

After the tears and the hugs and the second (and third) round of tears, Darcy excused herself and ducked into an empty patient room. She pulled out her agenda and the cell phone her parents had given her when she’d been released from the hospital a few weeks earlier and dialed the number she’d almost committed to memory what seemed like an age ago.

“This is Tony.”

Darcy didn’t know him very well, but she thought he sounded sad. She hoped her news would help cheer him up.

“Surprise! You’ve been upgraded to a sixteen-year-old, cancer-free soulmate, Soulmate.”

“Darcy?” he sounded shocked.

“Do you have any other teenage soulmates in remission? Because I gotta say, if you do, that really sucks for you.”

Tony snorted, and that must have released a floodgate of some kind, because then he laughed and laughed and laughed until Darcy worried he was going to run out of breath. When he finally stopped laughing, it almost sounded like he was crying.

“Are you ok?” she asked, a bit concerned.

She could hear Tony take a deep breath and let it out slowly before he responded. “Yes, kid, I’m ok.” He paused. “I’m really happy you’re not dead.”

Darcy smiled. “Me too.”


End file.
